I am
pleased to announce that we are going to start the next century of the audio
arts with this simple statement: for scientists, music simply doesnt
exist, because there is no scientific proof for musics existence.
It cant be weighed, measured, or quantified.

(NOTE:
this industry now employs thousands of scientifically trained men, all of
whom are laboring in their laboratories to advance our experience of music)

You
and I and billions of others know that music exists because we experience
it in our body.... only. Out there is only noise...and it only becomes music
when it enters our being. Music has not independent existence..music is only
an emotion...and deeply feel concrete physical experience. But for scientist
this, one of the worlds most common emotion, this experience doesnt
exist.... because music only exists within us, like love, hate, courage, and
hope....and these experiences cant be quantified. The most common and
compelling human experiences, those which are at the foundation of culture,
because they can not be scientifically measured, do not exist for scientists,
in the way that God or any other spiritual force can not exist for the scientific
investigator.

Oh how I love this paradox!
One of the books on this paradox is THE MYSTERIOUS FLAME,Conscious Minds In A Material World, by Colin Mc Ginn.

It
is also important to point out that scientists dont have a clue how
human consciousness was created. Can you imagine how tortured scientists are
because they dont have a clue how the force that created science was
created? Does the human mind have an unknowable origin?

Are
you aware that cosmologists, physicist and astronomers, a very sophisticated
community of scientists, who play with "test equipment" far more
sophisticated than the toys audio engineers use, are quite comfortable to
admit that they only know about 10% about the reality of cosmos. They wonder..."Where
is the other 90% of the cosmos...we know it is out there...but what is it?"
Of course this science is hundreds of years old and compels an intellectual
humility and honesty that has not yet developed in audio engineering? Let
us not forget that this " quasi/art/science" is really less than
one hundred years old and has not yet had time to mature...and develop a true
intellectual humility.

Can
you imagine the Audio Engineering Society making a public pronouncement?:
We only know about 10%, or less of how audio circuits work, when they are
doing their intended work..processing music.

Then
what are all of those audio engineers doing for a living? They are measuring
noisedistortion with the intense blind faith. What am I saying?
Yes it is a beautiful paradox. An audio engineer, who is attempting to be
as scientific as possible is operatingsolely on the basis of faith..blind
unproved conviction...a system of beliefs that claims there is a strong relationship
between noise and music....which is completely antithetical to the scientific
process of investigation...because they know that music has no independent
physical existence.

The
relationship between noise and music may be strong, but it cant be proved
scientifically and to many learned men, the relationship is as strong as Santa
Claus to Christmas....fantastical wishful thinking.

On
the other hand I want to suggest that the only relationship between noise
distortion measurement and music is a paradox, because all reality is a paradox
and music intrinsically is an expression of that paradox.

It
is impossible to design audio gear without using the "standard"
noise distortion measurement....but they tell us very little about the ultimate
quality of our circuits, because judgments about music quality are as personal
as my choice of what tattoos to put on my body. I have even gone so far as
to suggest that there is an inverse law of audio engineering.....musical quality
is inversely related to dependence on test equipment.

And
then there is the issue of culture...because like our taste in food.....our
taste in music is culturally determined....so a Swedish audio engineer is
biased very differently than a Mexican audio engineer...

Now
think about the intellectual integrity of the audio industry with decades
of using distortion measurements to convince consumers that there is some
relationship between distortion and music quality. Think of those thousands
of articles in audio journals claiming "breakthroughs" in circuit
design based on distortion measurement. Think of all the claims made for digital
audio and its perfection.

Why
do I keep on stomping on this question?

It
is an essential element of my Presidential campaign: When I am elected, I
will pass a law that is very similar to the "Cigarette Warning Act"
and make it mandatory that all audio ads and all audio products have a label
that says:

THERE IS
NO SCIENTIFIC PROOF FOR THE EXISTENCE OF MUSIC

DO NOT BELIEVE
ANY OF NOISE DISTORTION MEASUREMENTS

When
the audio engineering community acquires the intellectual integrity to admit
how little they know about the experience of music and how that relates to
audio gear, then, and only then will the audio arts begin to advance to its
true potential.